Destruction Rotation Question

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Hey, big fan of the guides on here. I just have a question for rotation on my Destruction Lock. Why does the guide suggest to not use fel flame? Fel flame is gaurenteed Burning Embers while simply recasting Immoliate only gives you embers on crit. Is the damage variation on diffrenet Immoliates (I.E. when popping cooldowns) really better for dps than always gaining embers on refresh?

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I believe the answer you are looking for is maximizing long-term DPS. You would have to cast numerous Fel Flames to get Immolate back up to a decent duration so that you could go back to charging up your embers with Incinerate. At level 90, we acquire a passive ability called Pandemic which would reapply Immolate to a high duration with one global rather than the 2 or 3 needed for Fel Flame. While Fel Flame does generate embers over the chance of it with Immolate, Immolate has a much higher DPET value than Fel Flame. DPET stands for Damage Per Execute Time. What this means is Immolate will do MUCH more damage per time needed to execute the ability than Fel Flame would. Immolate requires a small cast time and one global to perform all of its damage while Fel Flame requires 3 to 4 uses to equal the damage Immolate would do, but it requires a greater amount of time.

Fel Flame should be used while moving, but during a stationary stance, you should be reapplying Immolate the standard way and using Incinerate instead of Fel Flame in your other globals.

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About Fel flame needing multiple GCDs to do as much damage as immoliate. 1 use of fel flame does more damage instantly than immoliate's instant damage. Im not sure what the difference in times is between the refresh of immoliate vs fel flame really has that affect on my dps? and what is time for gbc? Shouldnt i be able to get to Fel flames off in the time of one immoliate?

Also does the DPET of immolate still greatly trump Fel Flame's when you count the refresh of immolate dot with fel flame? Or has that already been taken into account?

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Hopefully you can agree that Incinerate is better than Fel Flame. If you can agree with that, I show you this:

Immolate lasts for 15.23 seconds and has a cast time of 1.27 seconds with my current stats. The tooltip says it hits for 4,492 damage and an additional 18,502 over 15.23 seconds, so we see a total of about 23,000 damage for a 1.27 second cast if none of the ticks crit.

Fel Flame hits for 9,080 damage and increases the duration of Immolate by 6 seconds. The cast time is instant, and your Global Cooldown as a Warlock is about 1.5 seconds.

In order for Fel Flame to equal the damage done by Immolate if nothing crits is 3 casts. Because Immolate has a fast enough cast time to be inside your global cooldown, it has essentially the same cast time as Fel Flame. So for the same amount of time, you do 23000 damage with Immolate and 9000 damage with Fel Flame.

Now let's assess the benefits of Fel Flame...it would increase the duration of Immolate by 6 seconds. At level 90, using Immolate to refresh Immolate would increase the duration of Immolate by up to it's maximum duration + 50% of the duration remaining, so up to 20 seconds if cast when Immolate has 10 seconds left. Therefore, you would, again, need up to 3 Fel Fires to equal just ONE Immolate in terms of DoT refreshing.

Surely I do not need to show you how Incinerate is better than Fel Flame. Rule of thumb for a Warlock is ABC...always be casting. If you have to move and don't have Kil'jaeden's Cunning up to cast and move, then you should be using Fel Flame. Otherwise, use the rotation listed here at Icy-Veins.